


Cold Spots and Spirit Boxes

by RanchDeChloe



Series: a monstrous love [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Ghosts, M/M, for all the ghosts and violence everything turns out okay, possessed rk900
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 00:36:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16378067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RanchDeChloe/pseuds/RanchDeChloe
Summary: RK900 has come down with a mild case of being haunted.





	Cold Spots and Spirit Boxes

**Author's Note:**

> part of my attempt to write as many short october spooky G9 AUs as possible.

Gavin wakes up to the bed vibrating.

He rubs the sleep from his eyes, looking up at the back of his partner’s head.

RK900 is sitting up stiffly in bed, his LED a nasty nervous red.

Gavin pushes himself up, yawning and touching RK900’s shoulder, “R, what’s up? You’re buzzing”.

RK900’s eyes are half open and unactivated, left black with a slight glow, like a television that hasn’t been turned off properly. 

Gavin gives him a solid shake, “Are you broken, fuck-nut?”. Just like that RK900 blinks, his eyes coming back online, his vibrating stops, and his LED switches to yellow.

“You good?”  
RK900 looks around like he’s lost, “I think so”.

“What happened? Did you get a virus from looking at porn?”

“No, I haven’t downloaded any pornography in quite some time”.

“We’ll deal with it in the morning” Gavin yawns, flopping back.

RK900 nods, trying to figure out why the last 23 minutes of his life is little more than static in his memory. 

He scans over his last repair, a replacement in his spinal array from an impact wound for errors. 

He’s running at 100% efficiency.

Gavin tugs at R’s elbow to lay back. RK900 sinks into the mattress, still tense as Gavin shoves himself under R’s arm. RK900 relaxes a little, watching Gavin attempt to make himself comfortable while cursing under his breath was humorous. 

He might as well scan for malware one more time.

Just in case.

—-

Gavin sighs as they stand over the floating bloated corpse in the fountain, “Hey R, what do you wanna bet this dumb fucker was stoned out of his mind, hit his head on one of these fancy statues and drowned himself? R?”

He looks back at his partner who looks stiff.

Well, stiffer than normal. 

RK900 cocks his head at Gavin, thinking as he starts to fidget, stretching his fingers before rubbing his hands together, “I know you” RK900 points out, sounding a little off.

“Yes?” Gavin shrugs, “I mean… duh”.

RK900 twitches, “What did you just say?”  
“I said duh”.

“Duh what?”

“Are you sick? Do I need to take you in to a Cyberlife store?”

RK900 almost smiles, “Yes, I should return to Cyberlife”. He rounds on his heels and starts to walk away from the scene.

“Woah wait, fuck, I didn’t mean right this second, we have work!”

RK900 freezes, “work?”

Gavin reaches out and nudges R’s shoulder, ”you ok? You’ve been weird since last night”.

RK900 pulls away from Gavin like he’s been burnt before looking baffled, smoothing out his jacket.

Gavin leans back, calling over his shoulder “Uh, hey, Chris? Could you do me a favor and give my plug-in partner here a lift back to the station, have… I don’t know…. someone in HR look at him I guess? Don’t worry R, I got this, you cover for me enough”.

Officer Miller steps up gives the android a friendly smile. RK900 looks a little confused for goes with him willingly back to the squad car.

Gavin sighs, looking back down at the corpse “He might be a little fucked up but he’s no where near as under the weather as you, buddy. Back to work”.

—-

Gavin does not expect to see his partner in a holding cell when he returns to the station.

He also doesn’t expect the wild splatters of blue blood or Connor in the middle of the floor getting worked on by the emergency tech hired by the station last year.

“Holy fuck”.

No one even notices him, the whole place is buzzing.

Gavin slips by, looking at his partner through glass. RK900 is looking down at his still wet-with-thirium hands.

“What the fuck happened?”

“I don’t know. I assume I attacked Connor… but I don’t know if I did… there isn’t a record. No playback. Nothing”. RK900 sounded lost and hopeless for the first time in his short life.

Gavin tries to tip toe up to see what’s going on in the hustle and bustle of people trying to rectify the situation, “Looks like you did a number on him, sad I missed it”.

RK900 finally looks up from his hands and shoots him a dirty look, “This isn’t funny Detective Reed. If I can’t be repaired and I remain a danger to my team than I should be deactivated. I do not want to be deactivated.” Gavin notes the claw marks on his cheek, leaving small smears of blue and exposed white.

RK00 makes a small noise of defeat, “I need to be deactivated and completely deconnected from all shared android systems in case of malware”.

Gavin stands up straighter, looking back to his partner “Hey, no, I just got used to you, fuck that, you’ll be fine…. we’ll talk to Connor once he-“. Gavin gets a better view in the reflection on the glass “shit did you rip his throat out, you fucking animal, jesus fucking christ, R”.

RK900 turns away, facing the back of the cell. He can’t watch the mess he apparently made. His LED flicks between yellow and red.

Gavin goes to open the damn door when Officer Chen catches him, “What the fuck dude no way in hell, 900 went nuts, you missed it, it was crazy! Hank was going to kill him but then he just like …stopped, walked in there himself. I’d leave him alone if I were you.”

Gavin doesn’t believe it but 30 minute of security footage later Gavin doesn’t know what to believe. The two of them are crowded around a screen in an empty interrogation room. He has Tina rewind the worst of it, RK900 going from casually talking to Connor to a second later he’s got Connor by the adam’s apple and it all goes downhill from there. 

Hank joins them, looking exhausted and pissed.

Tina thankfully speaks up, “Hey, he’s ok?”

“Kid will be fine… he’s rebooting, techie says it was all superficial, popped a plate off and tore a few tubes. Thankfully 900 didn’t have a weapon” He glares pointedly at Gavin.

“Don’t fucking look at me, R feels like shit, he’s broken or something, you know he’d kill for Connor. He gets nasty with me if I’m so much as rude to that… “ Tina elbows Gavin to shut him up.

“He’s going to have to do some serious groveling when he gets the all clear, I still want to kick his ass, scared the shit out of me” Hank shakes his head.

Gavin turns back to the screen, “You were there, what the fuck happened? Did Connor say something?”

“No they were just doing their normal boring android small talk”.

Gavin frowns, “Shit, I’m gonna have to talk to Connor”.

“The hell you are you piece of shit, he has dealt with enough today, he doesn’t need-“

“I’ll be nice, I swear, for R’s sake” He holds up his hands in defense.

Hank’s hand balls into a fist and he looks like he’s trying to decide which curse word to call Gavin when out of the blue, Tina slaps Gavin as hard as she can in the back of the head.

“OW! Fuck! what the hell!”

She looks up at Hank “What? you looked like you wanted to see him get hit, he’s been hit, drop it. Let’s move it and figure out what the hell happened, If I left it up to you two you’d be huffing about your battery operated boyfriends all day. Let’s go already”.

She gets up and takes them both by their respective sleeves, dragging them out of the room.

—-

Connor looks as baffled as his twin who is still in a cell. He rubs his throat, still adjusting to both the new panel and the memory of the attack. Gavin, Hank, and half the department crowd around him.

“You won’t believe me” Connor says flatly.

Gavin rolls his eyes, “Why not?”

“Because what happened doesn’t make sense”.

“Try me, we’re all fucking cops here”.

“It wasn’t RK900 who attacked me”.

“The tape shows he did, hell, even the poor fucker says he did, are you in like…. android shock?”

“No. I’m fine, but I’m serious. I injured him, I got a sample of his blood in the fight, it wasn’t his serial number”.

“What?”

“The number shouldn’t be there, that number doesn’t exist anymore. He was destroyed”.

Connor looks up at Hank for support, his eyebrows knit together and he looks spooked.

“He had the same coding as an android that … Hank shot him in the head. He was destroyed. I made sure of it, I had to make sure he wouldn’t be brought back. I don’t understand”.

Hank goes pale as everyone looks to him. He sounds extra gruff as he tries to hide the tremor in his voice, “It was a whole thing” he brushes off.

There is a loud thunk. The whole department jumps as they turn to look back at the cell. RK900 is dead eyed, leaning against the glass. He thumps his fist against the glass again.

Gavin breaks the silence, “Ok so why does my partner have dead toaster blood?”

A wave of silence punctuated with the occasional thump. thump. thump.

The group watch as RK900’s LED goes dark and he slumps, sliding down the glass. Lights flick off, the audible hum of lost power. The Station is erie under the cloudy sky lights and assorted blinking LEDs. Things slowly flick back on as back up generators kick on but the overhead lights flicker, terminals beep and boop at strange intervals, the fire alarm clicks on unprompted. 

Gregory Allens, in cell three for being picked up on a drunk and disorderly charge, yells from behind glass, “Ah.. Hey… It’s pretty spooky in here can I go home? I don’t feel super safe”.

 

—-

Fowler is at a loss for words so it goes up to a vote and it’s agreed that Gavin is allowed to check on RK900.

Reed makes Officer Chen take a video on her phone.

“Listen, if I get my head ripped off or some shit… whatever, its not the DPD’s fault. You all told me not to go in but my stupid ass is consenting to going in there alone. You are all watching, you all heard that? Ok? fuck”.

He lets himself in, letting Tina lock him in. Gavin kneels next to RK900’s slumped form, “R? god, please get up dude”.

He fights the impulse to check for a pulse and instead tugs RK900’s shirt up, pressing down hard on his chest, waiting as his synthetic skin recedes over his thirium pump. He’s greeted by soft blue glow, the soft beat under his hand.“See? you are just faking like an asshole” he grunts, pulling RK900’s shirt down, shifting around till he can pull RK900 into his lap, getting a better look at his LED. It’s not gone dark like he thought, just a dim barely-there yellow. Gavin chews his lip in worry, not really caring that he’s basically in a fish tank where all his coworkers can see and judge. 

He needs to make sure that R’s ok.

He pets R’s hair back, “I am going to make fun of you forever about this you know, you got your wires crossed and after picking on me forever that I wasn’t allowed to murder Connor, Guess who takes a fucking swing at him….”

There is a soft knock on the glass.

Speak of the devil.

“I’ve called for specialized help. We’ll make sure he’s ok” Connor says soft and nervous, a little too good at sounding human.

Gavin waves him off, “Cool, I’ll yell if something happens just… I don’t know, get another blue blood enema or whatever the fuck you need to get fixed”.

—-

Help eventually comes, ushered into the cell by Connor. Gavin knows one of the faces from the news from when shit hit the fan. Both of them are androids. The woman has the look about her that had Gavin not been spoken for, he’d ask her to punch him in the face and thank her for it. The guy looks like he’s about to cry but that might just be how his face was made, he’s one of those too soft housekeeper bots. 

Connor introduces them, “This is North and this is Simon. North has made it her mission to study unorthodox repairs so no Android gets left untreated. Simon is…. well Simon is here to make sure North doesn’t try to punch a human cop”.

North shrugs, “I’d say I didn’t need babysitter but I’ve punched a lot of humans”.

Simon offers a little wave.

North puts her hands on her hips “Let’s have a look at our patient”.

Between the 4 of them they get RK900 out of the cell and onto a cleared off desk (“He’s so heavy!” “yeah, he has a lot of steel”). The bullpen clears out, no one wants to be around if something goes wrong. Gavin has never seen so many people shoved into the break room. They get RK900’s chest open and North interfaces directly with the sensors in his torso, protecting herself from any possible malicious code hidden away in his higher functions.

“Everything is reading fine just a little cold”.

“Cold?” Gavin asks.

“Yeah, hold on” She roots around, following the read outs. She worms her hand deep into his torso, her white fingertips vanishing under wire and plastic. 

“That’s weird, someone else feel this”.

Simon and Connor look to Gavin and Gavin rolls his eyes and reaches down next to North’s hand. 

The feel of blue blood smeared components turns his stomach but even he quickly figures out somethings wrong.

He yanks his hand back out, “Why is he all frosty?”

“No clue” she sighs, “I didn’t even know where had that kind of cooling power, Connor, is that a RK feature?”

Connor looks down into he’s nearly-a-brother’s chest “No, we just have exhaust fans likes everyone else”.

“It feels like the worst of it is this thoracic-“ She moves to pull the offending part out and RK900’s whole body flails, grabbing at North’s wrist.

R’s voice comes out metallic and static-laced “Don’t… don’t… don’t…”

His LED never glows, his eyes still are still unlit. North yanks her hand free with a grunt and RK900 goes limp once more.

Gavin’s phone vibrates again and again. He slips it from his pocket, getting direct messages from RK900. Jumbled letters, pure gibberish, the occasional corrupted unviewable image.

Gavin shows his screen to the assembled crowd.

Simon folds his arms in on himself, “This is bordering on the supernatural. I can’t be the only one thinking that?”

North snorts, “You’re a fucking idiot”.

Connor chews his lip, torn.

Gavin is taking all possible solutions, “Supernatural how, are we supposed to call a god damn priest in here to bless his blue blood or some shit”.

“Of course not, we’ll take out the part causing the temperature issues, get a fresh one, and we’ll see if he wakes up, no problem. Connor, I’m going to need pliers”.

Connor fetches the tool and North makes a rather inelegant attempt of yanking out the   
vertebrae. RK900 twitches and reacts again, reaching to shove away the offending hand but the group each grab a limb, doing their best to pin RK900 down till North manages to pull the offending part out. She drops U-shaped chunk of metal on the ground, it’s coated in frost and smears of industrial lubricant. 

RK900’s eyes open, bright and focused, he looks around a little baffled. “I am unable to get a reading on my legs or pelvis, what happened to me?”

Gavin giggles nervously, leaning over and pressing his forehead to RK900’s, “holy fuck don’t move, we’ll fix you, for being top of the line you are a messy fragile sack of shit”.

North squats and looks over the part, “Ugh… I don’t know what this is”.

Connor picks it up, “Oh, RK units after the 500 model had an upgraded spinal array for stability”.

“That’s great and all but where do we get a replacement part for this” North points out.

Simon leans into the huddle and the three switch to speaking internally.

Gavin is still hunched over his partner, “You scared the shit out of everyone”.

“I apologize” RK900 murmurs, “Though I didn’t really have control of myself… it was just… nothing, I’m missing a lot of time”.

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll get you duct taped back together in no time, their figuring out where to get me a new… whatever it is they pulled out of you”.

Gavin loses his last shred of shame and kisses R deeply, holding his face in his hands. 

From the bowels of the break room, Gavin faintly hears Tina whoop.

RK900 takes a moment to do a deep scan of his body, “The part I’m missing was just repaired at New Jericho, it should be fine, are they sure that was the damaged part?”

The three androids perk up and look back at him.

“You had it fixed at one of our clinics?” Simon asks.

North’s LED is going bananas as she already starts to worry that someone is sabotaging their parts.

Connor cocks his head in thought, “North, doesn’t Jericho recycle parts?”

She nods, “It does, there just isn’t enough to go around so we’ve been forced to transplant parts from scrap, but we always make sure the parts are clean”.

Connor makes a small distressed noise, “I think I know where this part came from… I’d like to see it melted down”.

—-

The debate on if android’s have souls is above Gavin’s pay grade or interest but either way he’s happy Connor went to the effort to find every scrapped part from RK800 313248317-60 and have them melted down into a rather hideous paper weight that now resided on the bottom of lake Michigan. 

Much to RK900’s annoyance they retrofit a PC200 vertebrae to fit his needs.

“It just feels off” RK900 complains, stretching and squirming against the mattress.

“Get over it, it’s better than carrying some mean and shitty little ghost in your belly” Gavin snorts.

“I think it was a system error, imagining that I was possessed seems like a massive logic leap. Not to mention if we did have souls and the ability to haunt why would our being be housed in one tiny replaceable part?”

“Whatever it was it scared me to death, I don’t want you keeling over dead from some stupid dead guy’s bone inside you. If you have to die, have it be something cool like a giant meth lab explosion”.

“I’ll keep your preference for my demise in mind, Reed” he offers coolly.

Gavin sits up in bed before straddling RK900’s waist, “I still think we should burn some sage inside of you, take you to church or something”.

“If it makes you feel better I’ll consent to a full systems check by a licensed professional”.

“It’s not the same… if we can find a licensed technician who is also an exorcist than maybe”. 

RK900 rolls his eyes, “You are superstitious and weak-minded”.

“I’m not the one who got his guts haunted and tried to kill anyone”.

“That’s fair” R shrugs.

Gavin smirks, “Come on, how about you shove that phantasmal cock in me and show me a good time”.

“Gavin, ‘phantasmal’ is above and beyond your normal vocabulary, I’m proud of you”.

Gavin groans and rolls off of him, moving to get out of bed before RK900 catches him around the waist.

“No! You made fun of me! I’m never giving you a piece of ass ever again. You are a light socket fucking piece of shit and I hate you”.

“Forgive me, it was the ghosts who made me do it” R noses his neck, pressing a kiss to his shoulder.

“Well if it was the ghosts. if we have sex while one of us is processed is it a threeway?” Gavin cackles as he presses himself back against RK900’s chest.


End file.
